Each big farmhouse, or
mas
,
as it was called in Provence, was a collection of stone buildings, built
roughly in a square around a central courtyard, with so many connected
outbuildings and small towers, so many different heights of roof and such a
diverse, asymmetrical collection of shuttered windows and arched doorways that
it resembled a small hamlet set in the middle of a wealth of fields and vines
that grew till they touched the walls of the buildings on every side.
Mistral would ignore the
signs that warned that the road to a
mas
was private property and drive
right up to it, get out of the car and circle around lost in admiration,
ignoring the warning barking of the farm dogs, until a peasant woman would come
out to investigate.
Then, while Kate
watched from the car, he'd engage her in conversation.
Invariably she'd invite them both in for a
glass of wine.
He was passionately
intent on penetrating into the interiors of these rural strongholds, no two of
which were alike, with their three-foot-thick walls and fireplaces so large
that he could stand in them.
The Provençal peasant women,
taciturn and wary of anyone unknown, would never normally have asked two
strangers into their homes, but Mistral's robust appreciation and interest
charmed them as much as did the sight of him, so much a fine cavalier in spite
of his rough workingman's clothes.
The
farm women's suspicions were replaced by friendliness and curiosity for they
could sense in this tall man of the north, with his red hair and ocean-blue
eyes, an emotional rapport, an immediate sensitivity to their way of life that
made him seem not quite a stranger even though they clannishly called their own
neighbors from the next village "foreigners."
"There isn't a more
beautiful place in the world," he told Kate
after they had spent
three days driving about the mountains and plains of the north Lubéron,
returning the forty kilometers to Villeneuve each night before dinner.
"At least in my opinion."
"Have you seen enough of
the world that you can be a fair judge?"
Kate couldn't prevent herself from wondering.
"I don't need to.
Some things are self-evident.
What more could
you ask of nature,
Kate, and what more of man, than these villages, this sky, these trees and
stones and earth?
I was right to come
back here.
In Paris I'd forgotten the
horizon
—
I'd forgotten green.
Nothing, Kate,
nothing
on earth is
as green as the leaves of a vineyard with the late afternoon sun on them."
Kate had never seen him so
expansive with visible pleasure.
He
looked as if every pore of his being was flooded with the particularly pure and
vivid light of the Provençal countryside, that land the poet Frédéric Mistral
had called "The Empire of the Sun."
She felt different
herself.
These days outside in air that
smelled of heather, rosemary and thyme had made her shed the thin layer of
sophistication within which she normally moved.
The hard edges of her features, which she had always before covered with
pale ivory powder, were all softened by a sunburn that rounded and warmed her face.
Her thin lips, no longer touched carefully
with bright red lipstick, looked fuller and softer against the flush of cheeks
and her high forehead was covered by the fine ash-blond hair that had been so
blown about by the wind of the open car that she had abandoned any attempt to
maintain her neat center part, forgot
to wear her hat and just let it
fly about as it wanted to.
The
perfection of the shape of her face was enhanced by this new abandon.
Now, as she slid into a country mood, she seemed
less formidable and as young as her twenty-three years.
"You were right about
the guidebook," she admitted as they finished dinner in the garden of the
pension
of Madame Blé.
"But, Kate, think of
what you've missed!
There's the Pope’s
Palace in Avignon
—
we haven't even been inside and it's just across
the river
—
and the Roman Arena in Arles and the fountains of Aix
—
oh, don't forget the Maison Carrée in Nîmes
—
here you are in the middle
of a hundred famous antiquities that tourists have been visiting for centuries
and all you've seen is a few sleepy villages and a dozen farms."
"Why do you keep teasing
me, Julien?
I said you were right; do
you want a formal apology?"
"An apology?
From you, the haughty New York lady, the rich
and elegant American who darts about organizing people so neatly that they
hardly know she's doing it?"
He
gave her a condescending grin.
"Now that's just not
fair.
I resent that."
Kate spoke calmly but she felt anger grip
her.
Why did he turn on her the minute
she made a concession?
What made him so
contrary?
"Fair?
Of course it's fair
—
you just don't
want to see yourself as you are.
You're
different here, I'll grant that, but in Paris when you're in your element, I've
never known a woman who managed to have things more her own way.
You're remarkable, Kate.
What's wrong with being rich and perfectly
dressed and looking down your nose and making life turn out the way you want it
to?
There are a lot of women who would
like a chance to change places with you."
"God
damn
you,
Julien!
Who the hell are you to tell me
what sort of person you think I am? Nothing, no one, matters to you, does
it?
Besides your work, is there anything
you truly care about?
If so, I haven't
seen it.
You're a
monster
."
Kate could hardly believe the words she heard
pour out of her lips.
Her composure, her
sense of proportion, the neat stitches of her normal speech had all disappeared
in a storm of fury.
Mistral smiled like a small
boy provoking a kitten.
"And you, dear Kate,
will of course, permit anyone to walk all over you because you're too
good-hearted to stop them.
Flexible,
soft-minded Kate, undemanding Kate Browning who only asks from life the small
fruit that falls from the tree to her feet."
Too angry to reply, she fell
silent, biting the inside of her lips, fighting back a bellyful of rage.
Lazily he spoke.
"Two such thoroughly decent people, two
such splendid characters as we, might make an interesting combination.
What do you say, Kate?
Shall we experiment?"
Kate jumped up from the table
and walked into the dark garden, outside of the pool of light. Mistral followed
her, and with his powerful hands, turned her toward him.
She stiffened her body in resistance and
averted her head, her jaw tense. With one hand he held her in place and with the
other he forced her head around to face him but she didn't raise her eyes,
whether still in resentment or not, he couldn't be sure, nor did he care.
She had begun to appeal to him these last few
days and surely she hadn't invited herself along on this trip just for the sake
of the scenery. Women didn't work like that, in his experience.
Not even rich Americans in expensive tweeds.
"Kate,
let's go to my room.
I want to see you
naked, spread out on my bed."
"Julien!"
"Now
don't tell me you're shocked.
Was I too
direct for Miss
Browning?
Do you
want pretty words, Kate?
I want to fuck
you.
If' that doesn't suit you, you have
only to say so.
I won't ask again.
So...
yes or no?"
"How
typical, how romantic," she muttered.
"I said `yes' or 'no.' "
In
the little light there was he saw her whole face take on such a complex,
shivering expression of unwilling but irrepressible yearning that it made him
put his arm around her, without another word.
All the way up the curving flight of stairs they said nothing to each
other, their only contact was the light pressure of his arm across her back and
his hand at her waist. Through his fingers he could feel her rigidity, her
refusal to lean against him, her insistence on walking as self-containedly as
if he weren't touching her, yet, Kate didn't hesitate or resist him in any
way.
It was almost as if she were
mounting the steps to his bed without thinking about what she was doing, yet
her silence was charged with something so tight, so secret, so much stronger
than ordinary sexual tension, that Mistral found himself puzzled by it.
He
released her to lock the door of his room.
When he turned back to her he found that she had retreated to the window
and seemed to be looking in complete fascination at something in the
garden.
He crossed the room and stood
behind her and brushed the back of her neck with one finger.
She didn't jump or turn around but her hands
grasped the window frame with determination.
"Kate,
how can we begin to experiment if you won't even turn around?" he
whispered to her teasingly.
She didn't
move, or indicate that she had heard him.
Mistral bent and brushed the back of her neck with his lips.
Kate gripped the window frame
convulsively.
He smiled faintly, and
with the tip of his tongue he touched the nape of her neck at the exact spot
where her bobbed hair came to a neat point and then he drew his tongue slowly
down the back of her neck along the delicate ridge of her spinal column to a
place between her shoulder blades.
There
he fastened his mouth against her skin and breathed gently, patiently, without
a single additional motion, until her hands dropped to her sides and she turned
around and faced him, white and shaking.
"You've
never kissed me, Julien.
Never even
kissed me."
"A
mistake, Kate...
one of the few I'll
admit to," he said as he reached down and lifted her chin toward him.
Her lips were cool and held together so
tensely, so ungivingly, that he drew back in surprise.
"Kate, you don't have to go ahead with
this
—
I don't force myself on unwilling women."
"No,
no, Julien, I
want
to," she insisted although her words were
contradicted
by the timidity of her voice.
She flung
herself toward him, throwing her arms around his neck and pressing her lips on
his in quick, short kisses that were almost like pecks.
For
a moment Mistral, amused, let this awkward assault continue, but soon he held
her off at arm's length.
"Not
so fast and furious, Kate."
"Christ!
Don't you ever stop making fun of me?"
For
an answer he picked her up and carried her over to the bed.
Still holding her in his arms he lay down
next to her.
"I'll admit to another
mistake...
I forgot how impatient you
are...
I'm going to teach you patience,
Kate, you need to learn it badly
—
so badly."
As she lay there stiffly he ran his hands
lightly down the length of her body.
She
flinched but didn't protest.
"I
have no intention of undressing you, Kate, not for a long time," Julien
murmured as he bent over her lips.
"Lie still," he commanded and he kissed her closed mouth,
concentrating all his curiosity, all his need
—
for it had been weeks
since he'd made love to any woman
—
on her finely shaped lips, until
they grew warm and swollen and finally parted willingly to allow his tongue to
enter her mouth.
He held himself back,
touching only lightly along the inside of her lips, languorously sweeping from
one corner of her mouth to the other, resisting her when she began to try to
trap his tongue and draw it further into her mouth, then letting her have it
for one brief second before he withdrew it completely and covered her whole
mouth with his, his mouth that always looked so stern until it turned hot and
tender in love.
As he played with her,
his tongue flicking in and out of her lips, pressing forward for only a tiny
fraction of
a moment, he
could
feel all the muscles of her body beginning to relax until
she lay passively, no longer clenched in anxious anticipation, her entire being
centered on his mouth and what it was doing to her.
Soon
that stage of abandon
passed away and he could sense the gradual tightening of her arm and leg and
pelvic muscles as she began to want more than mere kisses, but still he
confined himself to her lips, laughing inwardly at the lesson he was forcing
her to endure.
She groaned and ground her
teeth as he tantalized her.
You'll beg
for it, he promised himself, you'll have to beg for it, you cool
American
bitch, even as he felt himself growing almost unbearably excited.